


Deja Vu

by CaffeinaShips



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 11:17:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8054215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffeinaShips/pseuds/CaffeinaShips
Summary: For the season 1 episode The Benders. Dean steps into the bathroom and finds himself having an unexpected conversation with God. AU about an AU





	Deja Vu

Dean Winchester pushed his way past crowded tables and bustling waitstaff on his way to the back corner of the bar where he assumed the bathrooms would be. Dean was distantly aware of the feel of the sticky floor under his feet, the sounds of scraping chairs, and the loud laughing and rough talking of inebriated adults. He was aware of all of these things around him the way he's aware of everything around him all of the time. His senses always on, his default state-a kind of hypervigilance. He was also aware of the feeling of having to pee, and currently that was the sensation on his mind. 

There at the end of the hall was a distinctly 'Men's Room' looking door. He pushed past the last table, looked around the room in one last sweep. He noted the crowd, anyone looking in his direction, and Sammy getting himself together to walk out of the bar. Dean leaned against the door, swung it open and stepped into nothing. Literal nothing. Sensory deprivation nothing. No sound, no light, no door behind him. An emptiness empty of even being. And there was a man standing next to him. Floating next to him? There, anyway, where he wasn't a moment ago. 

"What the hell?!" Dean exclaimed, insufficiently.

"Hello Dean" answered the man. 

Dean took a hard look at the man. In fairness, the only thing that there was to look at. He was shorter than Dean, a little scruffy. His short hair was a little disheveled and his beard was short, groomed, but still somehow unkempt. He had a slight smile in the corners of his mouth that highlighted the laugh lines around his eyes. Dean thought he looked concerned but friendly and open. Dean squeezed his already tight fist a little tighter and resisted the urge to punch the man.

"Seriously" Dean replied, "What the Hell. What is this?"

The man smiled and crinkled his eyes further. "Don't punch me Dean, it wouldn't help. We're nowhere. It's a little corner outside of the universe I use for meetings like this. Typically this is where you start throwing a bunch of questions at me and getting angrier with my answers until you punch me in the eye." The man shrugged, "After that you get more cooperative, but I would prefer to avoid the waste of time. We have this meeting a lot, and I'm trying to streamline these a bit, so if you could just wait while I monologue to you for a while it would be helpful."

It looked for a second as if Dean might argue, but while friendly and open, the other man's face also had a hard edge to it, as if behind the playfulness there was also ruthlessness and wrath. Dean settled for folding his arms and glaring. 

"Ok, I would really like to keep this whole meeting under half an hour, if we can manage, so lets plow right through this. First of all, let me introduce myself. I am God". 

The man beamed a big smile as if expecting Dean to drop awe-struck to one knee. Dean's glare took on a skeptical tone, and almost looked as if he were going to make a reply. God hurriedly carried on to avoid this, looking a little sour.

"I am God, and there is an opening for another Dean in another universe and you are here to decide if you want to take that position. You will be given a short tour of the other Dean's life. If at the end of the tour you want this new life, your memory will be wiped, you will die in your universe, and appear in the new Dean's life as if you had always been there. That would leave an opening in the reality you currently reside in, and that post will be offered to another Dean, though historically your life has been a hard sell to the other Dean's, so I don't expect it'll get snapped up. In that case you will simply be dead in your universe, but alive in this new universe. If you decline the new Dean's life he will be dead, your memory will be wiped, and you will be returned to your universe. No matter what you choose..."

A little of the man's smile returned.

"This will be ending in a memory wipe. So don't waste too much time asking esoteric questions about life, and meaning, and theology because you won't remember any of the answers anyway."

Dean's skeptical look had deepened. 

"Let me get this straight..." Dean growled. 

"You're God, I'm outside the universe, and I'm here to decide if I want to be me in my life, or me in another me's life?" 

"That is essentially the gist, yes"

"And when all of this is over I get a memory wipe and whichever life I like better?"

"Yes, and frankly, I talk to a lot of Deans, a staggeringly disproportionate amount of Deans, so if we could just move this along..." God waved his hands in an impatient gesture.

"You know that's crazy right? Like, over-the-top even for a hunter crazy? Is this some kind of Djinn crap?"

God rolled his eyes looking exasperated and gestured around them. They were standing in a garage, the smell of motor oil, exhaust and tires all around them. It was a large, open looking space with five cars parked at various angles around it. Classic rock was playing in the background. In the far corner from where they were standing a man was standing next to a desk that appeared to be covered in little pieces of leather. He seemed to be holding two pieces of the leather next to each other and examining them closely. Closer by, a woman was wearing a face-mask and playing with the settings on a spray painting device. 

"Damn", said Dean "These are all really sweet cars. Is this the other reality?"

Dean looked significantly more interested and in danger of wandering away to examine each one closer.

"Pay attention" God answered sharply, "You only get two little clips from this day in this life, so don't waste it ogling tailpipes" 

A man rolled out from under the hood of the car nearest the men. A pair of grease stained work boots, followed by bow legs wearing stained jeans, and a black tee shirt. Dean found himself staring at Dean. Alternate Dean stood up and wiped his forehead on his shirt. The woman across the room pulled her mask off.

"Holy Hell, is that Jo?"

"In this universe you and Jo own a classic car restoration business with Bill over there. You do mechanical stuff, Bill does the interiors, and Jo paints. You're pretty successful if I understand correctly. Keep a steady business going"

Alternate Dean cleared his throat. "Alright guys, I'm done for the day. Got a special dinner I have to get to."

Bill smiled at him and waved him away. Jo smiled too "Awww, an anniversary. So sweet".

Alternate Dean blushed slightly, but Dean caught it. Alternate Dean tried to hide a goofy grin and muttered a "Shaddup" in Jo's direction. She chuckled a little and refocused on her tools.

Bill gruffly called from across the room "Hey, do not even THINK about coming in this weekend. These beauties will still be here on Monday and they won't miss you. Enjoy yourself". With that he turned his back on them to hunch over his desk. Alternate Dean, still grinning, turned toward the door to exit the garage.

Dean turned to watch his other self go, but the world shifts as his head swivels, and he ends up looking over his shoulder at a sweeping coastline of dunes and sea grass. The waves are rolling onto the beach and the breeze was shifting sand around the dunes and around their feet. Dean noted a small collection of Adirondack chairs around a stone fireplace on a patch of grass overlooking the beach. There was a stone path leading to a quaint two story shingled home with bright windows and a little deck. 

"Do I live here?" Dean asked.

"You do." Answered God. 

"Let me ask you something," Dean started, turning to face God, "Do you do this for everyone, every time someone dies, in every universe? Or is this a special service for Deans?"

"We do it for everyone" God answered "I mean, everyone we can. There are some universes where the people are different enough they aren't interchangeable, and there are some universes where the people do not cooperate, or where the other Gods do not cooperate, and some universes with no people at all. We try to do it as often as we can..."

He paused for a minute looking thoughtfully over the sea. Dean felt as though he could almost see a touch of the depth and breadth of the power and wisdom held in his slight frame. 

"Hold on, Gods? You're not the God of all of the universes? Are you the God of this universe, or of my universe?"

"Neither" answered God, looking annoyed. "We all just take turns escorting dead people around universes when we have spare time. I come from a universe where life never really took off, so I have a lot of free time. I don't even have a Dean, and I feel like I've spent half my existence talking to them. Honestly Dean, there's no point in talking about this. First of all, infinity is weird. There are infinite paradoxes, infinite problems. Second, I'm going to erase your memory, so even if you understood, which you can't, you won't retain that information. Third, you have limited time here, so why are you going to spend it on info you can't remember?"

"You're God can't you just take me back to when you want me? Why do we have a time limit here? What if I want more time to... I don't know, window shop. It's a big decision here."

"You know, in some universe there's a really unfortunate God who picks up a Dean and then gets stuck answering his pointless questions for eternity. In the interest of that not being me, can we move this along?"

Dean shrugged and wandered up the path toward the deck and the windows. Inside the house looked warm and cozy. Alternate Dean was in the kitchen sifting flour into a bowl. He was moving around the kitchen cheerfully, obviously very comfortable with what he was doing. Dean watched as Alternate Dean pulled down a canister of sugar and measured some into a mixing bowl. Dean thought alternate Dean looked happy and relaxed. There was a spring in his step, and he seemed to be wearing the hell out of the smile he had on. The home was pretty and the location was relaxing. Dean had to admit, it was pretty tempting.

"Where's Sammy in all of this?" Dean asked God, bracing for a really unpleasant answer. There had to be a catch. There's always a catch.

"He's a few towns over. He's married to Jess. Has a job as a legal consultant for a non-profit. He doesn't entirely hate it most days. Dean and Sam drink beers by the fire and listen to the surf when they can, but not nearly as often as they would like. Busy lives." God shrugged a little, still watching Alternate Dean bustling around his kitchen. 

"That sounds like a pretty good life" Dean admitted.

"I think overall" God answered.

Inside the house a man walked from one of the back rooms into the kitchen and into the light. He was roughly the same height as Alternate Dean, had short dark hair, and was also walking with a spring in his step. He was wearing black slacks, a white dress shirt, and a tie. He stood behind Alternate Dean peering into the mixing bowl. Dean turned around, grabbed the tie the other man was wearing and pecked a kiss onto the other man's mouth, turned back and flipped on an electronic mixer.

Dean jumped in place a little, a shocked look frozen on his face. 

"Who the hell is that?!?" Dean asked a little shrilly.

God examined Dean's face for a minute. "That is your husband Jimmy. This is your fifth wedding anniversary." He was quiet for a second watching the shocked expression remain unchanged on Dean's face. "Is that a deal breaker for you?"

Dean closed his slack jaw and turned back to observe the couple in the kitchen. Jimmy was leaning against a counter talking happily and animatedly at Alternate Dean. Dean was laughing hard enough that he was struggling to pour the batter he had created into the springform pan.

"No" Dean answered slowly, looking much more contemplative than shocked now, "No, it's not a deal breaker."

"What's going to happen to this Dean?" he asks after a moment of silence.

"Well, he's going to have a really nice night tonight and a pretty good day tomorrow. He has brunch plans with Sam. Then, on Sunday he'll fail to take his buddy Bill's advice and will sneak into work for a couple hours. There will be an accident and he will be killed. Or there will be an accident in your world, in which case he'll experience a very brief disoriented feeling sort of similar to a very short deja vu, which he won't really remember. In your world you will either die, or be replaced with a split second of deja vu, etcetera etcetera. Any time a human experiences those weird disoriented moments they are being replaced. It happens all the time."

Dean watched a couple of minutes longer. Something was nagging at him and it took him a couple of minutes to put his finger on it. 

"Hey, wait a minute. If this is my anniversary, why is this Dean making a cake? Why aren't we making a pie?" 

"Oh, yeah, it's a quirk of this universe. No pie."

"What the hell?" The shocked look was creeping back onto Dean's face.

"Well time and history are tricky things. Every aspect of reality is delicate. It happened in this universe that the discovery of rolled out flaky pastry did not coincide well with the invention of fruit fillings. When it was time to combine the two into pie someone, somehow, missed the mark and pie simply never was..." 

God trailed off catching sight of Dean's face. It was set in a stubborn frown.

"Take me back" Dean stated.

God was momentarily speechless.

"What? You... What?"

"This is the deal breaker. No pie, no universe. Take me back to my world."

God stared a second longer. "Are you telling me" he puzzled out slowly "that you would give up a perfect job, a beautiful house, a loving relationship, and Sam's happiness... FOR PIE?!? 

Dean shrugged. "Sam'll be fine. He'll be sad, but he'll get on without me. No pie, no universe. I've seen all I need to see."

"I... ok" God shrugged.

Back in nothingness, God shrugged again. "That's what makes me crazy about meeting you so many times Dean, you Winchesters never do what I think you're going to. You never end up where I guide you. I hope it serves you well some day, because it sure is a pain in my ass."

God smiled and waved at Dean as God turned to leave.

Dean swung open the bathroom door and stepped back into the bar. For a second the lights, sounds and smells seemed so overwhelming, like he was stepping from a dark empty space into a busy bar, but that made no sense. He glanced at the clock. Forty five minutes? How the Hell did he spend forty five minutes in a bathroom. As he double checked his math he became aware of a painful experience in his lower abdomen. Had he forgotten to pee? Who forgets to pee? For forty five minutes? He turned around and walked back into the bathroom. He was going to take a quick leak, catch up with Sammy and then try to talk him into finding a diner. Dean had a stronger than usual hankering for some pie.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here's my second fic. Like the other it was for spncoldesthits. If you found yourself reading it I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
